ONE
Dear X,
You appeared in one of my dreams in May. Well you didn’t appear, exactly. In the dream I was in some sort of waiting room with your family and an unknown ecclesiastic guy. We were mourning your death. I remember waking up late that morning and rushing to school with this disconcerting guilty feeling in my stomach. Why did I dream you had died? Did I wish you were dead? No, of course not, but clearly I was afflicted.
After having that dream I thought I was prepared to never see you again. I thought I was ready to reinterpret the discontinuous weeks I had spent with you in my breaks from school as a series of dumb escapades. I thought I was prepared to move on with my life. Then you approached me while I was writing in my favorite coffee shop. Seeing you cross that dimly lit backroom felt like witnessing some sort of resurrection. I admit I was shocked.
Somehow—I think it had to do with witnessing the unfamiliar desperation in your eyes—you convinced me that your death in my spring dream was not fully warranted. You convinced me to try openness once again. I am always a little startled by my renewed ability to be increasingly open with you. This letter is a testament to that. We entered yet another dumb escapade and then I left to Peru.
I tried to kill you in my mind a second time, this time consciously. We were not communicating at this point. I missed you a lot, and I felt foolish for missing you. The sadness of returning to grey, winter Lima after weeks of living in a Bora community in the Amazon only compounded my sense of unhappiness. The French having a saying: vague à l’âme, which translates poorly into something like waves to my soul and expresses a deep, heavy melancholy. One evening I decided to meditate on that feeling. In this period of meditation, I imagined us floating in this strange, dark, spaceless dimension. I visualized this long, twisted, ultramarine, satin-like, rope connecting my body to your body. Then, I imagined myself cutting the rope between us with a sharp knife. Untethered, I continued my time in Peru with very little thought of you.
I sit with these memories, and share them with you, because I believe they inform how I presently love you. I love you with the recognition that there is a bond between us that is simultaneously fragile, and durable. I love you with the terrifying recognition that you and I are mortal, and that someday I will inevitably lose you. I love you with the desire to treat this bond with the proper respect it deserves. I have no interest in being mysterious, or vague with you. I love you.
I want to assure you that my love for you is not only morbid. When I think about my love for you I also think about how I want to climb mountains, and swim in the ocean, and travel this world with you. I want to continue experiencing life with you. I want to explicitly invite you to, please, go ahead, be yourself and venture anything.
Hasta pronto y con mucho amor,
Esperanza
TWO
This letter was lost in the mail and never arrived to the person it was meant to reach. Here is a photo and transcription of the last page.
Mi mamá cree profundamente en ángeles. Siempre me contaba de cuando era pequeña vio un ángel en la cancha de su escuela. Nunca la creí, pero sin embargo, no estoy completamente convencida de que tu no eres algún especie de ángel. Tampoco estoy completamente convencida que te hice venir y me gustaría intentar de nuevo para asegurarme. Es un poco incongruente, pero creo que es más fácil creer en ángeles si sé que beben cerveza y se acuestan con humanos. Se merece repetir: eres magia.
Talvez pensaras que esta carta es demasiada, y es muy probable que haya fallado de expresarme precisamente en español, pero no me importa. Se sintió muy necesario escribir y compartir estas palabras. Espero que estés feliz y bien bajo la panza de burro y espero tener la oportunidad de compartir contigo de nuevo pronto.
Un chingo de gracias y un abrazote,
Esperanza